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I said we were in a post truth society, then post irony society (when reality became more absurd than the onion), now we are in a post reality society, when there’s practically no way for anyone to know what’s going on, as photos, and videos can be believable faked. we will quickly jump to a postpast society, where the past itself can be believably faked.
was the holocaust real? here is a documentary from 1945 about it made when it was liberated, but here is another documentary that claims to be from 1945 showing it with “prisoners” happy, with a dance hall, and partying with the guards, and how they sang while working… all claim to be real, all with articles about them how theybare real, all with articles about the other one being fake.
There will be no past, objective reality will be an unreachable goal.
based on echo bubbles your neighbour will live in a very different reality than you.
things like this have been going on for a while, but it’ll be so common it’ll be the new normal to not have reality.
You could build cameras that crypto-graphically sign photos individually. And that capture a lightfield at least partially (maybe possible with autofocus pixels already), then you know someone isn’t just capturing a monitor. This could be implemented into reputable smartphones too. If someone cracks (physically) the camera sensor/chip assembly, the certificate can be revoked after it’s been found out.
Then you could design an image format where any editing step (like cropping, color mapping) is reversible and signed too.
Most of this is because we don’t have a free press anymore. There are only 3 international newspapers and they have all been infiltrated or captured.
i fear that by the time those are implemented, they will be cracked.
Any fake picture could be traced to the individual camera and it’s registered owner, and the certificate revoked. It would be cumbersome and not foolproof, but it would reduce fake pictures and make it possible to verify photo and video evidence. A browser could then tag or even block any image in an article that hasn’t been signed.
My point is that it’s theoretically possible to avoid a “post-truth world”, although it is practically impossible to get done currently.
even if you were to do that.
at best, only some news can be verified.
but what about the past? if there are dozens of contradicting versions of history (including the actual history). all with their corresponding pictures of artifacts, documentation, literature… the history of and conspiracy theory will be as valid as any other, and might have as much evidence as the truth.
Fundamentally, web-archive or just signed hashes of existing documents to verify they haven’t been changed. Like this which the NED deleted. That also does require an institution dedicated to journalism or truthfulness or education.
The main problem is the immense power imbalance. The rich get richer has this inevitable outcome. We need a purge and restore a democratic government. It’s more a physics problem than an ideological one, a question of quantity of energy and forces. They have corrupted a large part of the population in one way or another, but they haven’t convinced the majority that truth is bad.
Chilling prediction but likely.
The answer to that most likely is physical media and carbon dating. Back to the roots. Physical pictures with a carbon date certificate in a vacuum chamber in a museum, etc.